Jay Bailey is the CEO and creative director at RapidFire Consulting and a longtime user of Camtasia. RapidFire’s philosophy is that you have less than a minute and half to tell your story. RapidFire began as a casual project with Jay helping out a couple of friends who were looking to tell their business story in a way that their websites couldn’t convey. Jay created short, clean videos for them and word spread!

As a video specialist, Jay uses Camtasia for Mac in his work for clients (see sample video for client SellAring). Because he's helping to tell the client's story, Jay finds that the workflow is different everytime. "We freelancers often have a tough decision to make before starting a screencast, especially because we’re not the 'expert' in the product—the client is," said Jay. "Sometimes, I want to focus on a very clean recording, at a smooth pace, and then simply narrate to that afterwards. The downside? It sounds more informal—it’s hard to get every single word right when you are ad-libbing."

"On the other hand, when I write out a polished script and read it carefully, it means that I then have to rely on the on-screen product to react smoothly, and my movement timing to flow perfectly with the pre-recorded narration. Camtasia makes it really easy to work either way, and it works fast enough to quickly make adjustments as the pieces come together.

The result is superquick turnaround time for a client who keeps changing his mind about what to show—or what to say!"

Intuitive video editor

Jay builds the core elements of his videos in Keynote and then edits in Camtasia. "Camtasia is the very best tool you can use for screencasting, especially in relation to the amount of training you need to be up and running," he said. "Many products have a steep learning curve, and the irony is that you don't use most of the features. Camtasia has a solid feature set and is as intuitive as you can get with video editing."